I love you! I’m sorry!
by planet p
Summary: AU; this heat is killing her!


_1982_

The sweltering heat feels as though it is oppressing her whole being; her breaths come in strange, silent, ragged gasps; the sounds a dying beast might make, she thinks; she's drowning in this heat. The air is muggy, murky water through which she swims, battling blindly against waves she doesn't even see until they crash against her.

She stumbles at the corner, she mounts the curb but her legs are tired, sluggish; her muscles protesting at the long walk; at the weather, at God knows what! She pitches, lunging forward sharply, but catches herself in time, slipping sideways to dodge a young man who's passing (she doesn't _need_ his help, nor does she want it), and stabilises: she won't fall.

Her steps would have had purpose, on another day. She's that type of person: a person of determination. But it's this weather – this Goddamn heat!

Lights blink to either side of her, now. Or maybe she's just started to notice them; maybe they'd been there before, too – always been there. She's almost there; her feet whine with happiness, prematurely, she thinks; pathetically. She's used to running; she runs everyday – but this weather! It is oppression.

The lights blink in her eyes, knowledgeable winks; they go straight to her head: _pound_, pound, pound; in time with the beat of her heart, the in and out of her breaths, the slap of her soles on the pavement.

There is another heart, she thinks, in afterthought. Another heart, sucking the oxygen from her breaths; wrecking her life by its very being. It is not needed: she has come to end it.

Her hand reaches for the handle: she's there now. Her hands are sweaty, they slip on the knob; she tightens her grip, the door pulls open. Her arm is tired, too. She has stepped into a freezer; a house for the dead, she thinks. In contrast to the feeling on the street, the sudden cold is painful, like slamming into a wall. It gets into her lungs, raises the small hairs on her arms; it digs into her chest, between her ribs.

She talks to the receptionist; she instantly dislikes her. _Please have a seat_, the woman had said! Patronising bitch! She takes a seat, nonetheless. Because of the damn air conditioning she can't breathe without pain: the acupuncturist has gone mad!

Resting her slender hands in her lap, she sees that they're shaking; they hadn't been before. With her mind, she wills them to still. They do not. Her eyes stray from her betrayer's hands to a poster; its colours clash disgustingly with the wall's paint. She feels like turning to the wall behind her and, with one fingernail, picking at the paint: just to see if it will peel. It mustn't take well to the extremes of weather; she imagines it would lift and peel away beneath her clammy hands: their frozen, now.

A wave of sickness rises in her throat, she lurches; a hand is clapped to her mouth, crushing lips, cheeks pushed in, clasped too hard: No!

The first time, she doesn't hear the doctor call her name; a struggle wages inside her; horror clashes against cold, hard purpose. Her eyes water; she lurches again.

Another time, her name is called. Her head snaps up; she falls forward, out of her chair, as though to collapse, but her knees bring her up, rising onto legs: for one moment, her eyes remain on the doctor, the white coat; the sickness flares: how a person can do such a thing!

She swerves and runs – to the door.

The street is overwhelmingly loud: Melody's feet take her toward the street corner where, minutes before, she'd stumbled and straightened. She feels as though she has been drugged (taken drugs) and has now just awoken; her stomach heaves. Vomit splashes on the pavement, against her shoes.

She can't believe herself!

She wretches; silent sobs race greedily out of the corners of her eyes: the heat makes it all seem like she's just stepped into some awful fucking nightmare.

Her hands covered in puke, with shaking fingers, she caresses her belly. _I'm so sorry, baby! I'm so sorry! I love you; I want you! Fuck, I'm so sorry!_

The horns of cars blast, she doesn't hear. Heavy dark, grey clouds rain down in sheets, soaking her to the bone; she cries loudly: nobody hears. Nobody stops. Shoes run; she is still; she cries.

_I love you! I'm sorry!_

* * *

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.


End file.
